Travel

March 23, 2008

I have been driving around the city with my sister and brother in law. I feel as if we are a cartoon of what I used to think when I saw older people touring around together. When I was young, we called the men “square hats”, a self explanatory term.

Yesterday I said that I wanted to go outside the city to the countryside. Houston is flat like Los Angeles proper, only more so. To get an elevation you have to go to a high rise or to a lesser extent, be on the top ramp of a freeway interchange. What there is going west is commercial property. and then nothing. Where we drove there were some scrub trees, but only a little further out there is forever flat nothing.

Houston is growing, growing, growing. if you are an engineer, There is a terrific amount of building. But as we know, Houston has gone through hard times before when there was a crash of the oil market. But for where I have been, for now, buildings look new and fresh as if they were old built well after the 80’s.

We stopped yesterday at Brookwood Community of the disabled that has a huge shop of goods that have been made by these disabled. They make plates, cards, crosses, garden pots, many more things, but also they have goods made by others. One stall was ,men’s hats. Primarily cowboy hats, felt for winter, and white whatever material for summer. I say “whatever” because the height of straws is Panama straw, but some are made out of paper from Japan. You could One hat was called “Gus”, for the Lonesome Dove character. Others were flat prarie hats to keep off the rain. Some where Harry Truman hats. One was a hat our long time dead friend from Texas wore, and his memory floooded back, including our old car we sold to him. A whole cast of characters were bought to mind, just from visiting the hat stall and trying on a few hats.

October 12, 2007

While the west coast has an early fall/winter, the east coast is burning up and I am in the middle of it. Yesterday it was in the nineties and the house where we stayed did not have air-conditioning. And we slept upstairs. Yikes! It was another case of driving around in an air-conditioned car, going to an air-conditioned store, an air-conditioned restaurant, or an air conditioned doctors office. Yesterday it was an air-conditioned drive, with meals, and a minute venture into Williams Sonoma. We drove to an eating establishment in the hunt country.

Baltimore seems to be all old. Either it is old or there is new institutinal architecture. Even when the tenements are overhauled, it seems they are redone in the old Baltimore style. Baltimore does not seem like a destination city, more of a poor sister of Washington. DC, in much the same way that Oakland is the step sister of San Francisco. This does not mean that Baltimore is without character, or lacks identity. The movie HAIRSPRAY was set in Baltimore. The National Aquarium is there and Barnes and Noble has a great store down by the inner harbor in a historic building Back to the hunt country, it is lovely: rolling wooden hils with the leaves just starting to turn, large estates with horse farms. The white fences alone are as costly as their stable fees. The land holds very nice homes in stone and brick appropriate to the character of the country. Your imagination makes you see Confederate troops sneaking under the trees, or the Red Coats with their muskets marching in formation through the meadows,or along the Gunpowder river where my son-in-law ished as a boy.

NoName’s husband grew up on the campus of the prestigious girl’s school, Oldfield’s. His father was head master, and his mother taught art, played hostess, chaperoned, and had a thousand other jobs. My granddaughter had not been there in her memory, so we all drove through the school. Until recently, this post office was operating on the school property. For many years it was the smallest post office building in the United States.

I arrived in Baltimore after ten pm, Eastern time. It was late enough that everything in the airport was closed. It was dark. I took a cab to meet my daughter, NoName, and my granddaughter, Thing 1. My only knowledge of Baltimore is the taxi driver, who was Russian. Because I live in a rural place, taxis are uncommon, even more uncommon is riding in a taxi. My main experiences were riding in taxis in San Francisco, where it is the thing to do. The drivers were Italian, Greek, sometimes Pakistani, and including the Pakistani they were jovial, and there was always repartee between the riders and the driver.
My cab ride was a $70.00 cab ride. It was a long ride, but I knew over priced, although I did not get how I was getting over charged. I knew he was going in a straight line. I saw the meter going flash, flash, flash. This guy had but nothing to say. Cab driving was not to be fun. So this made the price of the ride something where he should have tipped me. Oh gosh I guess I will let it go. I was safe.

September 27, 2007

Before I forget. There is a new Richard Russo book out just yesterdayBRIDGE OF SIGHS .

I paid full price for the hardback, as it will easily go around the family. There will be a lot of reviews on it this weekend. I have not read any reviews. But I like the cover and that is enough for me.

Wednesday my husband took me on a holiday. At night from out our living room windows we see house lights over on Whidbey Island. I always wonder about those houses across the way. How do you get there? Can they see me? Should I think about those people at all. At my last house I made up imaginary stories about the lives of people who lived in the houses across Agate Pass. I was told that Danny DeVito was building the huge house across the way. The houses that I now talk about now are much farther and a lot less intimate.

My husband drove me to the Outlet Mall where I bought a purse. Michael cringed when I told him. The only purses that he knows were at the COACH store. But he lucked out.

We ate lunch at Ivars, and then took the ferry over to Whidbey, where we got off and traveled along the east shore of the island. We passed the sweet town of Langley. I did not realize it, but there were some pretty fancy houses on Whidbey, not your navy housing. The weather was warm and clear. We could watch our own island, and we could discuss what we saw there. We sparred about which group of houses were our neighborhood. I said stop. I got out of the car with my 12 zoom camera and I found our house. This is exactly what I wanted to find! We drove north along the inlets, past the tiny town of Coupeville, the county seat, by the Naval base, over Deception Pass. We drove 168 miles to look at something less than 12 miles away. And this is what you have to look forward to when you are sixty-eight, almost sixty-nine.

August 31, 2007

We traveled home through the Hoopa Valley. We left our friends house thinking we would stop in the town Willow Creek for breakfast. Alas the one restaurant was closed. We could drive out back to the coast, but I wanted my husband to see one more time the scenic highway through areas we had camped, and he had fished, in our youth, read thirties and forties. He had never finished the last leg of the trip which was over Page Mountain to the Oregon border.

Hoopa is an Indian reservation where there used to be lumber mills. Now there is not much going on that is commercial, although a ex-mill had converted to a mobile home factory, but it was not in use. Basically, there looked to be a high school, an elementary school, and a grocery store and a Tribal center.

We found Laura's Cafe and stopped for breakfast at the small diner. We were the only white faces. One traveling family was breakfasting. Two old men without teeth ate at separate tables. The oldest of which had a onesided conversation with the family. A youngish mother sat watching her toddling child next to our table. Her husband was our acting waiter. They were very friendly. He never let Mike's coffee cup go dry. He isa firefighter and had just returned from Washington fire fighting in eastern Washington by the Canadian border. When he arrived at the site he was warned about the steep mountains where the fire was. He laughed because their steep mountains were like hills to him. He said to them, “Come on down, I will show you steep country.” If you fire fight around Hoopa, you work on vertical slopes.

The woman was fond of the route we would take. She told us to be sure to look at the trees as they were unique to the area. Weeping pines.

All over the diner walls were high school basketball photos. In 2000 Hoopa High School had won the state championship for their division. Thinking about it, it sounded like one of the movies that I never fail to love, the poor high school team makes good. The photos showed great pride. And it could not happen to a town better needing the self esteem.

Meanwhile the breakfast came. The hash browns were crisp and did not look like they had just come from the freezer, and the eggs were perfect.

August 30, 2007

I have been on another road trip Humboldt County, California. I stayed in the wilderness or with friends who are wireless Internet challenged. Michael and I are traveled over roads that we have traveled many times. The first day was south down I-5 territory which could be anywhere in America except that in this particular stretch there are trees, not corn, or high desert or low desert, plus there are the same old turn offs of McDonalds, Chevron and 76. But there is one new addition, and there are now espresso stands. At least in some areas, there is blessed countryside.

Day two is far more interesting. South of Grants Pass there are Hippie Drug communities, and or religious cult communities. Ordinarily traveling this country it is dry and hot, the heat taking your breath away. But global warming was not in the Illinois Valley this summer. The next segment is along the Smith River, which is a very beautiful river. It has a bed of granite and the water is clear, regardless of weather (flooding excluded), and is blue. The highway is still two lane in most places with a severe drop off to the river on one side and a mountain two feet away from the road. This passage is known for rock slides which are worse in the winter, but a big bolder can fall down anytime and crunch your car.

Once I was in the ER room with a daughter getting her arm set, and while chit chatting with the doctor, he mentioned that his wife was somewhat of an invalid. He had been driving with his family and this wife was in the passenger seat. A truck was headed straight at him. He said he had the choice of the river, or the mountain, and he chose the mountain. Choosing the river, death is inevitable.

We stop for lunch at an old inn. It is cool and the food is good.

Later we make a side trip to a restaurant that is off the beaten path in Klamath Glen. We hope it is still there with the minute cabins where you stayed over night. This place had BBQ ribs, and marguerites to recommend it. And like martinis, one was just right, two was too much and three was not enough. While the restaurant exists, the cabins have been scrapped away.

Coming to the Pacific after the drive through the mountains is breathtaking. I live on Puget Sound, so I am not unfamiliar with water. Seeing the Pacific after being gone is a joy: your heart does do a leap.

June 05, 2007

Such a great time! But the week is over and we have run out of clothes. Our car is such mess that we can find nothing. The neat box of maps are scattered. Bags of dirty clothes fill the trunk. Water bottles are all over the back seat floor. My eyes are still out of whack, and my eye glasses, I can not get straight. All the cords that come with cameras, computer, telephone are all in some bag except in the one that I am looking.

last night at dinner, we talked about how long it had been since we have had a vacation like this. Aside from driving back and forth to our old town, maybe eight years. Nine? We like traveling together and can find mutual enjoyment in many things. The rule is, when traveling if one of us wants to do something, the other has to do it. For example, we went to a dam outside Wenatche, but then Michael was great when we stayed out of the heat at Spokane Nordies. It is amazing how over the years, the partner that did not pick the place came to either learn a lot or out and out enjoy it. Michael actually cheerfully bought some shirts in Nordstrom, and had a fine time talking to another old traveling geezer waiting for his wife.

Back to reality. These photos are taken in Spokane. This is the Spokane river.

June 03, 2007

We spent Friday night in Post Falls, Idaho, but our final destination was Couer d’Alene five miles away. With great expectation we arise and head out. We did not know what Couer d’Alene was like, but we knew what we hoped it would be like. We hoped that it would be like Tahoe in the sixties. We would sit in our chairs by the Lake in front of our rustic cabin. Then Michael would head out looking for the best places to fish, should we come again.

The town has been discovered. It is pressing forward to become Santa Fe, or Sun Valley. The lake is beautiful, but so is Puget Sound. It has forty little bays and the circumference around the lake is 250 miles, driving. One hotel dots the lake. I think you can stay for less, but the basic room comes at $500. The rooms were full. Most other hotels are located out on I-90 away from the lake and you might as well be in any Best Western. Shops and galleries fill the town and resort hotel. Million dollar homes are everywhere. One multi story condo complex is being built on the lake, and a condo costs, turn key, three to five million. This we find out from our friendly helper at the tourist information.

Looking like bums, we had lunch at the resort which was exquisite, all of it. I tried to take a picture of the bathrooms, but could not. I had crab cakes.

Sunday is supposed to be nearly 100 degrees. What to do? What to do? We are dissatisfied with Couer d’Alene. But where to go? Be ready for the next installment.

June 02, 2007

The last laugh is on me. Yesterday I worked very hard with my camera learning how to work it in the manual mode. My daughter has said that I should use the viewer as it saves the batteries. So I squinted for nine hours through that little hole. Today I pick up my camera ready to continue my education. But I can’t see a thing. Everything is blurry. It is like having your eyes dilated and then being asked to read the bottom line. Today has been a day of travel from Lake Chelan to Coeur d’Aleane via highway 2. I would like every kid in America to take this trip. Without a game boy, a video, even a book. Only the socialization of the family. Perhaps a deck of cards and bubble gum. What is between these two places are hills and rocks, no hills, no rocks, but apple trees and wheat, and I am guessing hops, plus bare dirt that has been harvested waiting for replanting. For miles and miles there can be a straight road for as far as the eye can see. What you see is space. Open space. You see the wheat that makes your bagel. You see how much wheat our nation uses or sells to others. There are few houses. Some barns. But you realize how far one would have to drive, dine at your neighbors. And you look at the land the way some of us look at the ocean.

June 01, 2007

We have stayed in Lake Chelan for two nights, one night at Campbell’s, and one at the Best Western. One a place for families with kids, one for old farts such as us. Yesterday we took a nine hour Lady of the Lake boat trip from Chelan to Stehekin which is a settlement 55miles to the northern end of the lake. There are no roads to Stehekin and every thing is barged, or taken on Lady of the Lake. Our boat made two stops to the end, and a one stop deposited twelve coolers of ice cream. In the winter the boat goes only 4 times week. There are 12 miles of road in Stehekin, so everyone has three cars: one car for Chelan, one car for Stehekin, one car for the repair shop, and maybe either motor cycles, or a car to go to Seattle.

Aside from the beauty of the trip, what was so fabulous is that I had nine hours to practice with my camera. I am trying to work the Manual mode in the hopes that I can have better exposures. See what you think.